


loop

by joltik



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Temporary Character Death, Gen, The Eleventh Hour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-03 02:32:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13331637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joltik/pseuds/joltik
Summary: Taako's dying. But before that, something weird happens.





	loop

**Author's Note:**

> my favorite and least favorite thing in this gotdamn world is thinking about scenarios in which the umbra staff breaks before story and song
> 
> maybe someday i'll do something else with the idea - i'm really into the concept of the umbra staff breaking during the trial of initiation, for instance - but for now, have some quick the eleventh hour angst

It’s noon, and Taako’s dying.

In retrospect, he ends up remembering very little about this particular death. It’s not a particularly memorable loop - one of the ones where they accomplish basically jack shit and then the earth swallows them up and ch’boy and his entourage are dead.

But you know, something weird happens this time around. He’s got a bad head injury and is moments away from meeting his future boyfriend, figuratively speaking, so it’s not until way later on that he actually processes that it really happened and wasn’t just a fucked up hallucination.

See, in the pre-noon panic, Taako had dropped his umbra staff like a butterfingers, so the umbrella snaps just as easily as ol’ Taako does when the earth opens up beneath them.

Taako’s just conscious for long enough to see a red robed figure, much like the creep who’s been stalking them, emerge from his umbrella, but more...angular in form, compared to that other guy’s more rounded appearance. There’s something vaguely familiar about their form, actually, but trying to chase that thought down just stirs up a bunch of static.

He blacks out for a moment, but then despite the hooded figure’s mostly featureless appearance, he has the uncanny feeling they’re looking right at him, before they let out an agonized scream. That, more than anything, haunts him. He hears it in his dreams sometimes for months afterward.

This is the last thing Taako remembers from that loop before he whites out.


End file.
